Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[Jalopy]

If the egg came first, then it follows that science is correct about one thing; the chicken was born from an egg. The egg could have just evolved into eggdom/ egdarton.

If the chicken came first, then religion wins. God made the chicken and gave it the ability to lay eggs, whence other chicken would sprout forth. 

The real winner however was KFC.

 

[iNow]

13 minutes ago, Jalopy said:

If the chicken came first, then religion wins. God made the chicken

This isn't a brain teaser. Chickens also didn't magically appear out of thin air. 

[Phi for All]

43 minutes ago, Jalopy said:

If the egg came first, then it follows that science is correct about one thing; the chicken was born from an egg. The egg could have just evolved into eggdom/ egdarton.

Here's where studying evolution would really help. Eggs don't evolve. Evolution is the change in allele frequency within a population over time. So what happened was that a creature who was almost what we classify as a chicken laid an egg that became eggxactly what we classify as a chicken.

[StringJunky]

21 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Here's where studying evolution would really help. Eggs don't evolve. Evolution is the change in allele frequency within a population over time. So what happened was that a creature who was almost what we classify as a chicken laid an egg that became eggxactly what we classify as a chicken.

For evolution, the mutation occurs in the egg. If a mutation occurs in the roaming chicken, it's got a tumour.   The difference is global vs local

Edited March 3, 2022 by StringJunky

[genio]

The chicken came first as there's birds that don't lay eggs.

23 hours ago, iNow said:

This isn't a brain teaser. Chickens also didn't magically appear out of thin air. 

It's not like we can prove otherwise. It is all speculation. Just because you can't... It is not an indication that a supernatural power can't create a tiny egg that grows into a new animal with organs that function in complete harmony.

I have superpowers and I definitely believe there's higher powers but they definitely don't want us praying to them.

Edited March 3, 2022 by genio

[Phi for All]

39 minutes ago, genio said:

The chicken came first as there's birds that don't lay eggs.

Oh, which ones? I don't know of a single bird type that gives birth to live offspring. Educate me!

40 minutes ago, genio said:

It's not like we can prove otherwise. It is all speculation.

We can show mountains of evidence that chickens didn't magically appear out of thin air. Science isn't interested in proof, but rather in the best supported explanations. It is NOT all speculation. Who on Earth taught you that?

42 minutes ago, genio said:

It is not an indication that a supernatural power can't create a tiny egg that grows into a new animal with organs that function in complete harmony.

Science studies the natural world, so anything that claims to be supernatural is on its own. That's why religions can make up any damn thing they want to, but science has to stick to the evidence.

44 minutes ago, genio said:

I have superpowers and I definitely believe there's higher powers but they definitely don't want us praying to them.

Many people have beliefs that seem magical to others. It's not what we're interested in discussing here, though. 

[iNow]

2 hours ago, genio said:

I have superpowers and I definitely believe there's higher powers

And I have a suspicion that someone forgot to take their meds today 

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, genio said:

I have superpowers and I definitely believe there's higher powers but they definitely don't want us praying to them.

So define "higher powers" using natural terms, and remember that "definitely" means "without doubt". How could you possibly know not only that "higher powers" exist without doubt, but also that "they", WITHOUT DOUBT, don't want us praying to them? The little evidence we do have about deities suggests they're all about praying and worship. You're making an extraordinary claim, so please support it with some extraordinary evidence.

[Agent Smith]

How would we answer this question, seriously?

Evolution, the gradual view, would mean that there were some intermediate chicken-like and egg-like stages in between.

It could be that the first egg to produce chickens that lay eggs was laid by a non-chicken. 

[zapatos]

The egg came first.

Quote

Scientists have discovered in Utah the oldest dinosaur egg yet found in the Northern Hemisphere, and they have detected what they believe is a fossilized dinosaur embryo inside. The fossil egg is approximately 150 million years old

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/04/03/dinosaur-egg-may-hold-rare-fossilized-embryo/8b22ab46-5c4e-44a0-b8e4-88335e71dbf9/

Quote

The earliest fossil bones identified as possibly belonging to chickens appear in sites from northeastern China dating to around 5400 B.C.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657/

[iNow]

Eggs existed before chickens did no matter how you frame it. Why is this even a question 

[John Cuthber]

9 hours ago, iNow said:

Eggs existed before chickens did no matter how you frame it. Why is this even a question 

Because it implicitly refers to chicken eggs rather than, for example, insect eggs. Otherwise, it's a silly question.
 

We might consider that there's some combination of DNA that marks the difference between "chicken" and "pre chicken".

That presumably arose as a combination of genes from the parents of the "first chicken" (possibly assisted by some mutation).

And that DNA was in place, in the fertilised cells inside its mother before a yolk and shell formed round it and it became an egg.
So the chicken came first.
 

[Genady]

34 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

Because it implicitly refers to chicken eggs rather than, for example, insect eggs. Otherwise, it's a silly question.
 

We might consider that there's some combination of DNA that marks the difference between "chicken" and "pre chicken".

That presumably arose as a combination of genes from the parents of the "first chicken" (possibly assisted by some mutation).

And that DNA was in place, in the fertilised cells inside its mother before a yolk and shell formed round it and it became an egg.
So the chicken came first.
 

I think that the question implicitly refers to mature, egg-laying chicken. In this case, DNA of a chicken is not a chicken. So the chicken egg came first.

[joigus]

Quote

A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg

Samuel Butler

Yes. As many have said or implied before, the egg is the arrangement of genetic material to be tested against the environment.

The chicken is but the sequence of later developmental stages of that egg, set against different kinds of environments: pre-natal, peri-natal, young, reproductive, post-reproductive.

There's no chicken that didn't come from an egg. There are thousand upon thousands of eggs that never make it to become a chicken.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

Because it implicitly refers to chicken eggs rather than, for example, insect eggs. Otherwise, it's a silly question.
 

We might consider that there's some combination of DNA that marks the difference between "chicken" and "pre chicken".

That presumably arose as a combination of genes from the parents of the "first chicken" (possibly assisted by some mutation).

And that DNA was in place, in the fertilised cells inside its mother before a yolk and shell formed round it and it became an egg.
So the chicken came first.
 

It's a silly question no matter how you look at it. A fertilized ovum can be considered a chicken in the same way a human's fertilized egg can be considered a human. Where you choose to grant chickenhood/personhood is a philosophical/religious question that has no definitive answer.

[iNow]

The egg is also itself a chicken in that case. The distinction is without difference. 

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

I think that the question implicitly refers to mature, egg-laying chicken. In this case, DNA of a chicken is not a chicken. So the chicken egg came first.

But if the egg came from the last non-chicken that birthed a chicken, it's not really a "chicken" egg that the first chicken was hatched from.

[TheVat]

This topic is a compelling case for just making an omelette.

[Phi for All]

On 3/2/2022 at 12:43 PM, iNow said:

This isn't a brain teaser.

I figured the OP would eventually claim the answer is: the rooster.  

[zapatos]

35 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I figured the OP would eventually claim the answer is: the rooster.  

Har!

[John Cuthber]

3 hours ago, iNow said:

The egg is also itself a chicken in that case. The distinction is without difference. 

Eggs are crunchy- they have a shell.

The thing with chicken DAN predates that shell.

5 hours ago, Genady said:

I think that the question implicitly refers to mature, egg-laying chicken.

There's a 50:50 chance that the first chicken didn't lay eggs. We won't get a chance to ask him.

[MigL]

I remember when we used to discuss science.
Now we discuss the differing definitions of 'chicken' and 'egg'.

Personally, I like eggs more than chicken.
( over easy, so I can dip my toast )

[John Cuthber]

On 3/13/2022 at 8:40 PM, MigL said:

I remember when we used to discuss science.

We are discussing a very important part of science.
The importance of mutually agreed, clear definitions.

[joigus]

15 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

We are discussing a very important part of science.
The importance of mutually agreed, clear definitions.

I'm a stickler for clear definitions. I just don't know what this is doing on Brain Teasers and Puzzles.

[StringJunky]

I think we are looking at this wrong due to looking at in isolation. We only have to look for the actual founding parents of the domestic chicken:

Quote

The wild ancestor of chickens is generally agreed to be a tropical bird still living in the forests of Southeast Asia called the red junglefowl –  with other junglefowl species possibly adding to the genetic mix. From these origins, humans have carried chickens around the world over the past two millennia or more.

So, eggs dramatically predate chickens. But to be fair to the spirit of the riddle, we should also consider whether a chicken’s egg predates a chicken. As humans consistently chose the tamest red junglefowls and bred them together, the genetic makeup of the resulting birds will have shifted. At some stage during this domestication process the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) evolved into a new subspecies, Gallus gallus domesticus, AKA the chicken.

In practice, it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when this happened. But in theory, at some point two junglefowl bred and their offspring was genetically different enough from the species of its parents to be classified as a chicken. This chicken would have developed within a junglefowl egg and only produced the very first chicken’s egg on reaching maturity. Looked at this way, the chicken came first.

https://www.newscientist.com/question/came-first-chicken-egg/